This document discusses hub sites in Office 365 and SharePoint Online. It begins by explaining what hub sites are and their purpose of aggregating related team and communication sites. It then covers basics of hub sites like how they bring together sites, provide cross-site navigation and search, and apply a consistent look and feel. The document also discusses creating hub sites, associating other sites to hubs, navigation, search, branding and theming when using hub sites. It provides examples of common use cases for hub sites and known current limitations. It concludes by referencing additional resources on advanced hub site uses.

1. HUB SITES; THE SUB SITE KILLER
Taking full advantage of Office 365
April 14th 2018

2. @valleelp
https://en.share-gate.com/blog
Sharegate | Product manager | Speaker
Louis-Philippe Vallée

3. [ NDA ]
Source: https://en.share-gate.com/global-sharepoint-industry-study

4. CHIFFRES DE MS

5. What’s the problem?

6. Business decides it’s time
to move to Office 365

7. We don’t really
know what is
awaiting us on
this road.

8. Wishing for a nice and easy migration
We migrate our SharePoint sites « as is »

9. We don’t really know what is
awaiting us on this road.
MISSING ON
MODERN EXPERIENCE
OFFICE 365 GROUPS
HUB SITES
…

10. WE ARE STUCK IN A
ROUTINE
SHAREPOINT
2007
SHAREPOINT
2010
SHAREPOINT
2013
… trying to do the same things
in the newest version

13. Ben, our IT admin

15. HOW TO GET THERE
SUCCESSFULLY?
Getting to know hub sites
Planning your migration
• Flat architecture vs Sub-sites
• Known limitations
Demo

16. Let’s start with
the basic.
Shall we ?

17. The intent behind a hub site is to help
organizations add structure, aggregate news,
search across sites, and organize what normally
would be a disconnected ecosystem of
collaboration sites.

18. Hub
site
Team sites
Communication sites
Basics
Bring together related team sites
and communication sites
Cross site navigation
Roll up news and site activity
Search across associated sites
Consistent look & feel across sites
Admins create, users adopt and
use

19. Basics
Customers want to
organize sites into
groupings that
 Make it easier for users
to discover and recall
related content
 Apply common controls
and branding
 Establish common
admin policies
New
hires Benefits
Benefits
planning
Rewards
Comm
Giving
Campaign
HR
Source: Ignite 2017 session BRK2393 by Denise Trabona & Melissa Torres
Intranet

20. Basics
Customers want to
organize sites into
groupings that
 Make it easier for users
to discover and recall
related content
 Apply common controls
and branding
 Establish common
admin policies
Kids
New
hires
Benefits
Special
Project
Benefits
planning
Quests
Reward
s
Special
interest
Research
Senior
Student
Facilitie
s
Giving
Campaig
n
Comms
HR
Travel
Program
s
Source: Ignite 2017 session BRK2393 by Denise Trabona & Melissa Torres

22. Creating a hub site
What you need to know.

23. Only a SharePoint
tenant admin
can promote a site
to a Hub Site

24. $adminUPN = Read-Host -Prompt "The full email address of a SharePoint administrator account,
example: jdoe@contosotoycompany.onmicrosoft.com"
$orgName = Read-Host -Prompt "Name of your Office 365 organization, example: contosotoycompany"
$userCredential = Get-Credential -UserName $adminUPN -Message "Type your password."
Connect-SPOService -Url https://$orgName-admin.sharepoint.com -Credential $userCredential
Write-Host "Connection successful"
$hubSiteUrl = Read-Host -Prompt "Url of the site to convert to a hub site"
Register-SPOHubSite $hubSiteUrl
Write-Host "Convertion successful"
Using Powershell

25. Hub site association :
• Works on all site templates
• Limited to only 1 hub
That’s right, there is no hub of hubs

26. An SPO Admin can
control, who is allowed
to assign a site to a
specific hub
Powershell: Grant-SPOHubSiteRights
A site owner can
associate/disassociate
the site
UI: Edit site information panel

27. Hubs do not influence permissions

28. “We are working on an
approval process so that
when someone associates
their site to a hub, the hub
site owner gets to approve
the request” -Microsoft
No approval process

29. Navigation
Persistent and shared across all sites associated to a hub.

30. In a site associated to a hub a navigation bar is
added in the header of each page

31. Global navigation
It can have a maximum of 3 levels
This menu is
managed manually
Note : Only modern page will display the global navigation
Not editable on
associated sites

32. Work in progress
• Not taxonomy driven for
centralized management in the
term store
• No security trimming or audience
targeting

33. Look & Feel
Applied automatically to a site when joining a hub site.

34. Let’s play with a real
Hub site
How will SharePoint help you integrate your brand?

35. Three tiers of branding and navigation
Organization logo + nav
Logo graphic + link
Nav bar background color
Set in 0365 Admin Center
Hub logo + nav
Logo graphic + link
Nav bar background color
3 tiers of navigation
Site logo + nav
Logo graphic + link
Hover card
Navigation (either horizontal or left)

36. Out-of-box themes
Up to 120 color combinations

37. Custom theme
New, easy-to-use tool to
generate theme files for your
organization
Hosted on Fabric web site:
http://aka.ms/spthemebuilder

38. Theming
•Synced from the hub site
•Enforcement controlled
by hub site owner

39. Search
Scoped to the hub content.

40. Increased relevance
& Content discovery
When you search for
content from a hub
site, results include
content from all
associated sites.

41. Use case: hubs for content management
scenarios like policies and procedures.

42. Webpart updates
News roll up and site feed

43. News roll up

44. WARNING
Roll out of news and documents is
relying on the Graph/Search and you
might not see the news immediately
after being published, it takes few
minutes (5-10)

45. Sites webpart

46. Let’s play with a real
Hub site

47. Information architecture
Welcome to a flat world.

48. Cons of not having sub-sites
• Content types and site columns cannot be easily
shared across site collections.
• Not ideal if you have custom branding, navigation
or advanced features.
• A subsite can automatically inherit settings from its
parent site including permissions, features…
• A subsite can automatically be added to the
navigation of the parent site
• Term sets cannot be shared across site collections
unless it is created at the farm/tenant level.
Source: https://joannecklein.com/2017/11/03/sharepoint-site-collection-advantages/

49. Pros of a world without sub-sites
• Site provisioning can be managed by selected user,
• avoiding proliferation of subsites in your environment
• Permissions don't cross over to other site collections,
• making it easier to manage for site owners.
• You can enable external sharing on a site collection basis,
• reducing security leaks
• It's also a boundary for storage.
• The new Retention Labels/Retention Policies are published
at a site collection level.
• Facilitates cleanup of unused sites.
• Flexible for content reorganization
• A site can be moved easily into the navigation hierarchy
Source: https://joannecklein.com/2017/11/03/sharepoint-site-collection-advantages/

50. When to use a hub?
Some use cases for hub sites.

51. Common use cases
Intranet home
Suitable for smaller
organisations without a
complexe need for
publishing infrastructure

52. Common use cases
Department hubs
IT, HR, Marketing, Finance

53. Common use cases
Project hubs or a
PMO hub
Simple mechanism to
access all the active and
completed projects and
roll up status details

54. Common use cases
Financial reporting hub
Aggregate site for a reporting
period and then having
associated sites attach from
different departments as they
work on their independent
materials and reports.

55. Known limitations

56. Limitations
• List of all hub sites is not available in SP
Admin center
• Available only through “get-SPOHubSite”
powershell command
• No available for Multi geo tenants (but
will be in the future)
• 50 hub sites max
• This is probably only a starting point, but
for now, plan your structure accordingly
• No limit to the number of sites connected
to a hub.

57. Let’s wrap this up

58. Hub site are the
missing piece, but …
• No best practices yet
• We are waiting on solutions for
content type management and
news roll up (scheduling,
targeting …)

59. The workplace is
evolving
We must embrace this
paradigm shift to take full
advantages of Office 365.
• Rethink the way
information is organised.
• Explore new ways of
communications.

60. We anticipate rollout completion to all
organizations by mid-May.“ – Mark Kashman

61. References
• Organize your intranet with SharePoint hub sites (by Mark Kashman)
• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/Organize-your-
intranet-with-SharePoint-hub-sites/ba-p/174081
• Few tips by Marc Anderson
• http://sympmarc.com/2018/03/28/office-365-hub-sites-are-here-a-few-tips/
• Theming your hub site
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/declarative-
customization/site-theming/sharepoint-site-theming-overview

62. How to do it by script using PowerShell
• Create a hub site in SharePoint Online
• https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/create-a-hub-site-in-
sharepoint-online-92bea781-15d8-4bda-805c-e441e2191ff3?ui=en-
US&rs=en-GB&ad=GB
• Auto Provision Office 365 sites in a Hub Site using Site Designs
• http://www.aerieconsulting.com/blog/connect-new-sites-to-hub

63. SharePoint design documentation
The design documentation provides
context and design guidance so you
can better:
• Customize SharePoint
• Design responsive web parts
• Use themes and colors
• Design for accessibility (coming soon)
https://aka.ms/SPdesignguidance

64. Advanced use cases
• GETTING ALL YOUR HUB CONTENT USING SEARCH
• http://www.sebastienlevert.com/2018/03/26/getting-all-your-hub-
content-using-search/
• Joining a hub on site create automation
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo1iN7pbmLI
• Common use cases for Office 365 SharePoint hub sites
• https://www.habaneroconsulting.com/stories/insights/2018/common-
use-cases-for-office-365-sharepoint-hub-sites

65. Thank you!
Follow me for
more @valleelp